Death and doom are they whose crested triumphs toss
  On the proud plumed waves whence mourning notes are tolled. 
Wail of perfect woe and moan for utter loss
  Raise the bride-song through the graveyard on the wold
  Where the bride-bed keeps the bridegroom fast in mould,
Where the bride, with death for priest and doom for clerk,
Hears for choir the throats of waves like wolves that bark,
  Sore anhungered, off the drear Eperquerie,
Fain to spoil the strongholds of the strength of Sark
  On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea.

Prince of storm and tempest, lord whose ways are dark,
Wind whose wings are spread for flight that none may mark,
  Lightly dies the joy that lives by grace of thee. 
Love through thee lies bleeding, hope lies cold and stark,
  On the wrathful woful marge of earth and sea.

NINE YEARS OLD.

February 4, 1883.

I.

Lord of light, whose shine no hands destroy,
  God of song, whose hymn no tongue refuses,
Now, though spring far hence be cold and coy,
  Bid the golden mouths of all the Muses
Ring forth gold of strains without alloy,
  Till the ninefold rapture that suffuses
Heaven with song bid earth exult for joy,
  Since the child whose head this dawn bedews is
Sweet as once thy violet-cradled boy.

II.

Even as he lay lapped about with flowers,
  Lies the life now nine years old before us
Lapped about with love in all its hours;
  Hailed of many loves that chant in chorus
Loud or low from lush or leafless bowers,
  Some from hearts exultant born sonorous,
Some scarce louder-voiced than soft-tongued showers
  Two months hence, when spring’s light wings poised o’er us
High shall hover, and her heart be ours.

III.

Even as he, though man-forsaken, smiled
  On the soft kind snakes divinely bidden
There to feed him in the green mid wild
  Full with hurtless honey, till the hidden
Birth should prosper, finding fate more mild,
  So full-fed with pleasures unforbidden,
So by love’s lines blamelessly beguiled,
  Laughs the nursling of our hearts unchidden
Yet by change that mars not yet the child.

IV.

Ah, not yet!  Thou, lord of night and day,
  Time, sweet father of such blameless pleasure,
Time, false friend who tak’st thy gifts away,
  Spare us yet some scantlings of the treasure,
Leave us yet some rapture of delay,
  Yet some bliss of blind and fearless leisure
Unprophetic of delight’s decay,
  Yet some nights and days wherein to measure
All the joys that bless us while they may.

V.